New digital home for Centrica Storage

A wholly-owned subsidiary of Centrica plc, the parent company of British Gas, Centrica Storage operates the Rough reservoir under the seabed in the southern North Sea, alongside two offshore platforms and a major gas processing terminal at Easington on the East Yorkshire coast.

As part of a progressive business initiative to provide a future-proof, digital working environment for it’s employees, Centrica has recently moved operations into a new, purpose-built hi-tech office. Located in the Bridgehead Business Park, close to the Humber Bridge, the new building provides easily accessible contemporary offices facilities, specifically designed to expand and enhance the company’s communication and operation capabilities.

In line with Centrica’s new digital direction, Saville Audio Visual was awarded the contract to equip the building with comprehensive and easy to use meeting and collaboration facilities with a unified user experience. The project encompassed 23 meeting rooms over two floors plus an impressive reception equipped with a state-of-the-art videowall and digital signage.

Flexible Meeting Spaces

Outside the main meeting rooms is a Saville RoomReserve booking system. Featuring a Windows based tablet screen, the system makes it simple to end or extend a meeting as well as catering for ‘no shows’, maximising occupancy of each meeting room in this busy new development.

To allow for seamless screen sharing, integrated into the meeting rooms and management meeting spaces are Saville 55” commercial displays with HDMI and VGA inputs set into the meeting tables; furthermore, either a Barco Clickshares or a bespoke floor connectivity plate have been installed.

To make operation easy for non-technical users, a Saville One Touch 4-way control system was provided in most rooms. A common frustration in many meeting rooms is a lost or inoperative remote control; the One Touch provides easy, permanent user operation of source, volume and system on/off.

A key part of the project was to install interactive technologies to encourage collaborative working at the new site. In total, eight large meeting rooms including the MD’s office, feature interactive touch capabilities with the provision of Saville Multi-Touch displays in 65” and 86” sizes. For an intuitive BYOD hands-on experience, each screen includes two wireless connection dongles. To ensure crystal-clear audio across all spaces, each room includes integrated ceiling mounted speakers and amplifier combination.

Multi-function Conference Room

Located on the ground floor is the 60 seat conference space which can be used as a single large meeting space or can be split into two separate spaces. When used in the open setting, content is displayed via a ceiling mounted Saville HD laser projector onto a 2.5m fixed frame screen, this is supported by two 43” Saville HD Pro2 LCD repeater screens. This allows all audience members to see presentations clearly, regardless of where they are sitting.

Positioned at the head of the conference room is a a custom-built lectern which houses the data inputs, microphone and additional hand held and tie-clip radio mics. A Barco Clickshare provides wireless BYOD connectivity for screen-sharing across all devices, whilst the eight ceiling speaker Sound Field System is designed so that the second room can be isolated when the partition is in place.

The second room features an 86” Saville Multi-Touch screen complete with two wireless connectivity buttons, Hydraport cable management and an independent audio system.

Reception Video Wall

Visitors to the new digital office are greeted by an impressive 2x2 videowall featuring four Saville VW55” monitors. Set in a bespoke housing, the videowall includes a dedicated Saville Sign digital content player. Additionally, centrally installed digital signage players feed a number of strategically located 65” Saville HD Pro2 ceiling mounted commercial displays in the Administration Support and Asset Performance areas, providing real-time updates and company information.

Matrix TV System

Located within the main Comms room, a bank of five HD FreeSat boxes are routed into a matrix switcher, allowing any of the FreeSat boxes to be relayed to any of the six building monitors as required. To ensure the highest-quality visuals, Saville distributed the HD video signals via the buildings' structured cable network using discrete Bluestream encoders at the source, with decoders located at the displays.

Centrica Storage managing director Greg McKenna, said:

We’re delighted with our new offices which represent a major leap forward in the quality of our working environment and our use of technology. We now have offices in-keeping with a division of a FTSE 100 company. This move has enabled us to bring all our teams into one place in a vibrant, highly-professional, collaborative environment surrounded by other successful companies.